Ordinance Ends Liquor Ban In Zion

Applebee's To Get 1 Of 3 Liquor Permits

December 06, 2000|By John Flink. Special to the Tribune.

Sixty-seven years to the day after Prohibition was repealed by constitutional amendment, the Zion City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to lift the local ban on alcohol by passing a liquor control ordinance that allows alcoholic beverages to be sold in most of the city.

More of a discreet nip than a keg party in the streets, the ordinance permits just three licenses at first, and all of them have been spoken for. Down the road, city officials said they hope that going wet will make their town more attractive to restaurants and retailers for whom a liquor license is a normal part of doing business.

"This all began, simply enough, as a dream to bring an Applebee's restaurant to town," Zion Mayor Lane Harrison said Tuesday.

An Applebee's restaurant slated to open next year is among the first three businesses to receive a liquor license under the ordinance. The others are a Piggly Wiggly grocery store in the works and the banquet facilities at the Shepherd's Crook Golf Course, owned by the Zion Park District.

Under state law, the new ordinance applies to only those parts of the city annexed since 1934. That year, residents voted to keep the ban on alcohol in their town, even though Prohibition had been lifted everywhere else. That referendum can't be overturned without another referendum. City Council action, therefore, only applies to parts of the city not affected by the 1934 vote.

As a practical matter, that means booze will remain absent from the heart of Zion's downtown commercial corridor along Sheridan Road. Businesses north of Illinois Highway 173 and south of 33rd Street can apply for licenses, though, as can those in the western reaches of the city, all in unincorporated Lake County in 1934.

Supporters of lifting the alcohol ban have argued that it would help attract new businesses to the city, bringing jobs and tax revenue to offset losses incurred by the 1998 close of the Commonwealth Edison nuclear power plant, which had been the city's main economic engine for decades.

"This is one of the pieces of the economic development puzzle," Commissioner L. Howard Bennett said after the ordinance passed Tuesday. "We've had to turn away businesses that have come to us in the past because we couldn't grant them a liquor license. Most of our population is supportive of this change."

Prohibition lasted from 1919 to 1933. In Zion, however, the ban was part and parcel of John Alexander Dowie's grand plan when he founded the city as a Christian utopia in 1901. Streets in the old part of the city still bear biblical names.

And alcohol wasn't the only vice outlawed in Zion. Swearing and spitting were also prohibited by law, and smoking was the most common cause for arrest. Uniformed guards from Dowie's Christian Catholic Church patrolled the streets on Sundays to round up members who didn't make it to morning worship.

Dowie's church changed its name to Christ Community Church in 1996 to reflect its non-denominational character. In many ways, the church is still the center of the community, sited in the geographical center of the city in Shiloh Park and home to the annual Zion Passion Play, the dramatization of the life of Christ that attracts pilgrims from around the world and casts hundreds of city residents in supporting roles.

The repeal of Zion's prohibition on the anniversary of the repeal of the National Prohibition Act was simply a coincidence, Harrison said.

"We introduced this ordinance two meetings ago and we usually pass ordinances on the second reading, which should have been two weeks ago," Harrison said. "But we made so many changes that it took three meetings to get it done. We didn't pick the date, but it sure is an interesting historical note."